ABSTRACT
For the past thirty years, Amitai Etzioni has stood as a moral beacon within sociology against the politics of bureaucratic corruption. Etzioni unambiguously declares that "what corrupts American democracy most these days is PACed interest groups". Etzioni is himself hard pressed to draw the line between free speech and free spending, because in point of fact PACs are not illegal. Etzioni is strongest as a historian of the political system. The problem is that Etzioni has identified virtue with one party and vice with another. And this partisan element is all to the bad. Etzioni might well argue that his is a popular rather than a scholarly work and hence not subject to the weight of research findings. Etzioni's solutions follow in a strange way from his passions: strengthening public interest groups to act as a counterweight to political action committees, covering the costs of campaigning from public rather than private funds, curbing lobbying.
